Social Media

HOW TO: Send an Audio Tweet

When Twitter’s 140-character limit just isn’t enough to get your message across, or you want to give a tweet the personal touch, why not add some audio?

We've already brought you ways to share music on Twitter, but the solutions below will help you share the spoken word. Whether you want to sing happy birthday to someone, rant, or make a heartfelt apology, we’ve found five services that can help you out.

All the services we’ve tested have three things in common — they are all completely free, they don't require a phone (i.e. they are web-based solutions), and they are all easy to use. There are differences between them, so it’s worth having a read through our experiences so you can see which would best suit your own needs.

Chir.ps is a super simple way to broadcast your voice to your Twitter followers. After signing in with OAuth, it’s just a matter of entering your name for your personalized Chir.ps page before you can get going on the recording side of things.

The on-screen recording is again, simple — just authorize Chir.ps to use your computer’s mic, hit one button to start, say your piece, and then hit stop. You can preview your recording and once you’re happy with it, add text and then tweet it.

There’s a slight delay before the tweet will hit your stream, and when it does Chir.ps will have added a shortened URL (like this: http://chir.ps/6hb) to your message which people can click through in order to hear your audio.

While still decent, the audio quality of Chir.ps did not seem as great as other services we used, but the site does offer a listen count, so you can see how many people have hit play, which we do like. Here's what your message will look like when people click through to Chir.ps:

AudioBoo (“because sound is social”) offers an iPhone and Android app as well as an online service, but for the purposes of this article, it’s the web-based offerings we’re interested in.

Once you’ve signed in with OAuth and chosen your AudioBoo username, the online recording takes place in a pop out window, which also gives you the option to upload a common audio file.

If you record via the site, you can talk (or sing, or hum, or groan or whatever it is you want to do) for five minutes, after which you can preview your ramblings. Once you’re happy, give the recording a title and AudioBoo saves it down into the “Your Boos” section of the site.

From here you can choose to share your audio to Facebook, get an embed code for it, or tweet it, which creates a short URL like this: http://boo.fm/b154817

AudioBoo’s sound quality is good, but there’s no way to see how many people have tuned-in to listen to your broadcast, although there is the capability to comment on Boos. This is what your Boo will look like:

Twaud.io is another service that lets you both record online and upload files. Recording online is easy: Just sign in with OAuth, authorize use of your mic and you’re good to go for a generous thirty minutes worth of record time, which is practically podcast length.

Just hit the record button, hit it again to stop, and then press play to review whatever it is you’ve just uttered. Once you’re done on the same screen there’s a box to enter up to 100 characters of text, then just press the “Twaudio it!” button and you’re done.

Twaud.io’s URLs are super short (http://twaud.io/ls4) and play automatically when someone hits the link. Those who listen to your recordings also get the option to download them, get an embed code, retweet them or comment on them, which is sent as an @reply to the creator.

Sound quality is good, and the site tells you how many listens you’ve racked up, which is also good for an ego boost. This is how your message will appear to others:

Chirbit doesn’t offer OAuth sign-in as it’s not designed solely for the microblogging service, but setting up an account is a pain-free process, all the same.

Once you’re in, you can use the service to record up to two minutes of audio, as long as you’ve given the appropriate permission just by hitting the onscreen buttons. After you’ve listened back and decided you like what you hear, you can give the clip a title and then add it into a category.

The default category is a “Chirbit” and any casual users who are interested in occasionally using this as a social tool need not worry about the others (such as "audiobook," "joke," "pickup line"), which are designed to help the Chirbit community find content more easily.

To save your Chirbit, you hit send and it will then appear on your Chirbit homepage. To get sharing, hit the cog icon on your recording and the site gives you the option to post it to Facebook or Twitter, making you a nice little shortened URL in the process. Here’s one we prepared earlier: http://chirb.it/5LAfeM. And here's what viewers will see, which includes the option to respond:

As well as offering a paid-for service where "celebrities" will record a message for you to tweet, ShoutoMatic also offers the infinitely more useful and free service of letting you record your own tweets.

Head on over to the site, either sign up for an account, or connect via Facebook, and you're ready to start "shouting," as it were.

On the simple interface you just hit to record, review and save the clip. If you've signed in with Facebook it will prompt you to post it on there, but you can skip this bit.

After you've saved it, you can e-mail, download, post to Facebook or tweet your audio. If you tweet it, then Shoutomatic makes you a neat shortened URL (like http://bit.ly/ckvllv) and adds the text "Check this out" to your tweet, which obviously, you can choose to delete.

There is no listen counter on ShoutoMatic, but people are able to reply directly on your message page. Here's what anyone following the link to your message will see:

If you're in the United States, Pockets lets you send targeted voicemail to an individual Twitter user. As you will see in the video demo above, Pockets will call you and record your message, which is then sent as an @reply to the recipient who can click through to the Pockets website to listen.

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